Does anyone know the percentage rate an MA uses to calculate resale value of a MINI after three years? I think its about 60% of the original purchase price, but am not sure. Also, Do the MC and the MCS depreciate at the same rate?

I'm trying to figure out if the difference in the resale value after three years justifies the difference in the purchase price (and payments.)

Thanks

 

They probably just use the ALG value. I've had good luck pulling that info by going to the Honda website and doing a custom vehicle comparison. I believe they show 36 and 60 month values.

Of course, this is my first post here, but I've done a lot of car buying and leasing over the years.

 

Thanks for the advice. I went to the site, but for some reason they don't post the ALG value of the MINI.

 

I knew I had looked at this previously, so I went and checked it out. You're right for 2008. If you go back and plug in 2007 for the competitive car (2008 is probably too new to have been picked up yet) you'll see at 36 months 62% for base Cooper and 60% for S. At 60 months, it's base at 47% and S at 45%.

Interesting that the base Coopers are holding more value. I guess they took into consideration that the S's will be driven harder.

Looks like if one were looking to make a decision on cost of ownership, the base Cooper would be the way to go.

 

Thanks again. I didn't think of plugging in 2007 numbers. In either case the MINI holds up pretty well!

 

Better than most at this time!

I've leased and purchased several Benzes over the years. It's always fun when the salesperson talks about the 51% (or whatever) residual. Yeah, that's great, but on an $80K car it's still a LOT of money. "Oh, so I could just buy and burn 2 Honda Civics instead of driving this, eh?"

Oh well, gotta love what we drive or we'd all be tooling around in generic 4-wheeled capsules.

 

Somthing to remember in general terms the more options added the less residual. For example a loaded 35K Mini will hold less value at 36 months than a base model in percentage terms.

 

This is a good point, too. If you go out to a site like kbb.com and start looking at the values of used cars, you see real quick that things like anthracite headliners, "premium" leathers, etc. don't return anything, and for most of the options that do return anything it's just a fraction.